Indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza due to lack of intelligence, says report
The indiscriminate nature of the Israeli army's 15-month assault on Gaza was in part due to its inability to "pinpoint Hamas commanders", a new investigation reveals.
The report by the news outlets +972 Mag and Local Call indicates that Israel lacked intelligence on the whereabouts of members of Hamas, prompting bombing runs that targeted wide areas including Palestinian citizens.
"When targeting senior commanders in the group, the Israeli military authorized the killing of 'triple-digit numbers' of Palestinian civilians as 'collateral damage'," the joint investigation added, noting that Israel maintained "close real-time coordination with US officials" regarding the expected death toll.
In some cases, the army killed Palestinians using several 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs in a strategy called “tiling” and failed to kill the intended target.
According to the news outlets, strikes carried out often used US explosives, and were known to pose harm for Israeli captives held in Gaza, despite prior concerns expressed by military officers.
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Based on conversations with 15 Israeli Military Intelligence and Shin Bet officers involved in these operations, the investigation reveals that the military also intentionally deployed "weaponised toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate militants in their tunnels".
According to the investigation, Israel has long known that such bombs release carbon monoxide, a lethal gas that can kill through asphyxiation as far away as hundreds of metres.
“The gas stays underground, and people suffocate,” Brigade General Guy Hazoot told +972 Mag and Local Call.
'The tunnel becomes a death trap'
“[We realized] we could effectively target anyone underground using the Air Force’s bunker-buster bombs, which, even if they don’t destroy the tunnel, release gases that kill anyone inside. The tunnel then becomes a death trap.”
'We could effectively target anyone underground using the Air Force’s bunker-buster bombs, which ...release gases that kill anyone inside'
- Brigade General Guy Hazoot
Though a spokesperson has previously indicated to the news outlets that such tactics were never deployed by the Israeli army, the new investigation reveals that the air force "conducted physio-chemical research on the effect of the gas in enclosed spaces, and the military has deliberated over the method’s ethical implications".
In one such case of using chemical byproducts to target Ahmed Ghandour, the Hamas brigade commander in northern Gaza, three Israeli captives were killed as a result. The army had told loved ones that it was unaware that they were held nearby the Hamas commander.
The attack was reportedly authorised despite "ambiguous" intelligence noting that the three captives could have been in the area, according to three sources with knowledge of the attack.
Several sources indicated to the news outlets that this was not an isolated incident, but one of many air strikes that knowingly killed or endangered the captives.
"While attacks were aborted when there was specific, definitive intelligence indicating the presence of a hostage, the army routinely authorized strikes when the intelligence picture was murky and there was a 'general' likelihood that hostages were present in the vicinity of a target," the investigation stated.
Another military source told the news sites that "pinpointing a target inside a tunnel is hard, so you attack a [wide] radius", adding that as a result of the indefinite location, the targeted area could be as huge as tens and even hundreds of meters.
In June last year, the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said that Israeli forces may have violated the laws of war in their campaign in the Gaza Strip.
In a report that assessed six Israeli attacks that caused a high number of casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the OHCHR said that Israeli forces "may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack".
"The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel's bombing campaign," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
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